Imagine this scenario: you are watching the news and they go to a protest rally in China. Students are protesting for women's rights and start burning the flag. Immediatly armed military men come into the scene and grab the protestors. The reporter then says that this was done because such protest is illegal in China. What would you think of that? Nothing good, right?
Well the issue of flag burning in America is teetering dangerously close to reaching such status. The last vote I heard of was in the Summer of 2006, when Congress was looking for anything to validate its nebulous and corrupt nature, but this vote is going to come again and again until the end of all time.
And what troubles me is that this issue is not just politcal currency for some of these politicians. Some of them actually believe in it!To vote on such a measure would take our democracy back a notch and make us look fascist to a world that has all eyes on us. It would in fact strengthen these forms of protest greatly-if not in our eyes then in the eyes of the world beyond the scope of our patriotism.
The First Amendment covers freedom of speech in all its forms. Just because a painting is not speech does not matter; it is protected. That is because we long ago knew the truth that freedom of speech means freedom of expression in any venue.Shoot, maybe they want to protest the fact that Congress is spending time debating this at all!
"Love your country, surely, but love your governemtn only if you have to," Twain once said. Flag burning is a form of criticism of government-and if it is not it is surely criticism of our culture. Either way people have the right to do it, and plenty of reasons.I do not think Flag Burning is all that impressive a form of protest, but to the concerned politicians out there: keep working on it! With a few more laws in place, Flag Burning could be the form of protest in our "New America".
You play right into their hands with this one. Are you trying to make this a self contained act? They can burn flags as a protest over Flag Burning laws! People should be able to buy and burn whatever material they please-until it becomes an environmental hazard. They should be able to shred the flag, spit on it, do whatever they wish with this piece of material. No symbol is so great as to imbue people who buy it with reponsibility for its care! You can buy a TV and break it with a bat but if you buy a flag you have to be careful, because it is against the law to tarnish it? How insane is that, and that this is what our elected officials spend their time in office debating?
They try hard to protect the symbol in its material form while they ravage everything it stands for. They are more interested in protecting a piece of cloth than a man's rights. Maybe the people who are burning flags are just trying to reflect back to politicians what they have been doing with their policies all along. I guess they just can't handle the criticism.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
We Are Fighting a War but the Prisoners We Take are Not Prisoners of War?
Judicial branch? What judicial branch?
This vernacular frustrates in the extreme. "The procedures must be fair," Gonzalez said to the Senators, "but also must reflect that we are still at war and that our men and women on the front lines operate in a war zone, not in the controlled environment of an F.B.I. forensics lab."
If we are at war then why are these men who are imprisoned in Guantanamo not prisoners of war? Because it is a different kind of war... and they go on and on and you are left behind at the question: what does all of this have to do with the rights of prisoners? What about this war being different mandates that we must deny these prisoners due process?
They are criminals or they are prisoners of war. It has to be one or the other. Either way they are due their rights. These men are being treated as if guilty until proven innocent-without being given the means for the latter. It is thoroughly insane.You cannot just create a new definition of criminal--in this case "unlawful combatants"--to slip between the cracks and give yourself ultimate power over these men. The Bush Administration is to be trusted to care properly for these prisoners? No wonder they are committing suicide. We came up with the Geneva Convention and our due process laws for a reason, and that reason is acknowledgement that not all men being tried are guilty and that even the guilty deserve to get sentenced and on with their punishment as soon as possible. If you are going to lock them up that means you have evidence, right? Enough to prosecute? Then why not do so? Why leave them on some base to rot....
They have proven with their lack of concern over bin Laden that they are after nation states that support terrorists more than non nation state organizations. This is of course a huge tactical error. The organizations that operate independant of any one nation state simply relocate out of the conflict zone and in fact cases seem to flourish in the targeted areas. Maybe he would have more of an excuse for treating our POWs as something else if he was fighting this war in any non conventional manner, but he is not. He is saying this is a new war, then fighting the war like any other against nation states and not terrorist organizations, then when it comes to the rights of prisoners, he refers to his earlier misleading statements about how this is a "new kind of war that must be fought differently."But the only tangible difference so far seems to be in how they treat those captured in the process. Does a suspected terrorist deserve fewer rights than known members of the Vietcong did when we fought Vietnam? Of course not. The Vietcong employed terrorist tactics all the time but we still gave them their rights. Why? Because that is one of the ways in which we were proud to be better than them. So a nation of terrorists in power deserve rights but those suspected of being in a terrorist agency have none? This is all the more damning because the former is a certaintly while the latter is something than in many cases is not even proven at the point when the prisoners are denied their due process.
But you know by now, don't you? They have no interest in giving these strangers from afar due process. They have no interest in being fair to them at all. They have taken advantage of semantics in terms of the Geneva Convention and manipulated them to avoid a responsibility they should embrace as readily as they did the war that preceded it. Their minds are obviously more focused on conquest than maintaining any sort of moral or ethical standard with regards to those caught along the way. The problem is they do not seem to see why they should treat them fairly. I really do think that sort of empathy is beyond these people, and that is one of the things about this Administration that will always stay with me--their inhumanity.
This administration invokes the word "War" to get an emotional reaction out of people-a currency for them to cash in on-but they do not want to accept the responsibility that comes with it. They have failed humanity yet again, but at this point, I've lost count. Bottom line: at least one of those people they took is innocent. We should do everything we can to get that person free and along their way. "I would rather see a thousand guilty men go free than one innocent man imprisoned," Thomas Jefferson. To look at Bush's policies, he seems to believe the exact opposite.
This vernacular frustrates in the extreme. "The procedures must be fair," Gonzalez said to the Senators, "but also must reflect that we are still at war and that our men and women on the front lines operate in a war zone, not in the controlled environment of an F.B.I. forensics lab."
If we are at war then why are these men who are imprisoned in Guantanamo not prisoners of war? Because it is a different kind of war... and they go on and on and you are left behind at the question: what does all of this have to do with the rights of prisoners? What about this war being different mandates that we must deny these prisoners due process?
They are criminals or they are prisoners of war. It has to be one or the other. Either way they are due their rights. These men are being treated as if guilty until proven innocent-without being given the means for the latter. It is thoroughly insane.You cannot just create a new definition of criminal--in this case "unlawful combatants"--to slip between the cracks and give yourself ultimate power over these men. The Bush Administration is to be trusted to care properly for these prisoners? No wonder they are committing suicide. We came up with the Geneva Convention and our due process laws for a reason, and that reason is acknowledgement that not all men being tried are guilty and that even the guilty deserve to get sentenced and on with their punishment as soon as possible. If you are going to lock them up that means you have evidence, right? Enough to prosecute? Then why not do so? Why leave them on some base to rot....
They have proven with their lack of concern over bin Laden that they are after nation states that support terrorists more than non nation state organizations. This is of course a huge tactical error. The organizations that operate independant of any one nation state simply relocate out of the conflict zone and in fact cases seem to flourish in the targeted areas. Maybe he would have more of an excuse for treating our POWs as something else if he was fighting this war in any non conventional manner, but he is not. He is saying this is a new war, then fighting the war like any other against nation states and not terrorist organizations, then when it comes to the rights of prisoners, he refers to his earlier misleading statements about how this is a "new kind of war that must be fought differently."But the only tangible difference so far seems to be in how they treat those captured in the process. Does a suspected terrorist deserve fewer rights than known members of the Vietcong did when we fought Vietnam? Of course not. The Vietcong employed terrorist tactics all the time but we still gave them their rights. Why? Because that is one of the ways in which we were proud to be better than them. So a nation of terrorists in power deserve rights but those suspected of being in a terrorist agency have none? This is all the more damning because the former is a certaintly while the latter is something than in many cases is not even proven at the point when the prisoners are denied their due process.
But you know by now, don't you? They have no interest in giving these strangers from afar due process. They have no interest in being fair to them at all. They have taken advantage of semantics in terms of the Geneva Convention and manipulated them to avoid a responsibility they should embrace as readily as they did the war that preceded it. Their minds are obviously more focused on conquest than maintaining any sort of moral or ethical standard with regards to those caught along the way. The problem is they do not seem to see why they should treat them fairly. I really do think that sort of empathy is beyond these people, and that is one of the things about this Administration that will always stay with me--their inhumanity.
This administration invokes the word "War" to get an emotional reaction out of people-a currency for them to cash in on-but they do not want to accept the responsibility that comes with it. They have failed humanity yet again, but at this point, I've lost count. Bottom line: at least one of those people they took is innocent. We should do everything we can to get that person free and along their way. "I would rather see a thousand guilty men go free than one innocent man imprisoned," Thomas Jefferson. To look at Bush's policies, he seems to believe the exact opposite.
Man with HIV sentenced to 35 years for SPITTING on someone?
(Aside: This is my first post! I could not resist writing about this)
I read about this and could not find any site to comment on it at... I guess that is why I got a blog, right?
Here is the link to the story:
http://www.officer.com/online/article.jsp?siteSection=1&id=41400
Wow. I am blown away. Obviously the fact that the man he spit on was a cop made his sentence worse--it should not have. Obviously the fact that this man seems to fit the "lowlife" profile made his sentence worse--that should not have mattered either. Where is our impartial system? Where were these jurors minds at?
How can the saliva of an HIV positive man be considered a deadly weapon when HIV is not transferable through saliva?
(Check out this site if you have any doubts about this well known fact:
I could not find any site that had comments on this topic so I hope people will spill their guts here. That is what I want this place to be about... me bringing up interesting topics and seeing what the general reactions to them are. Thanks for reading.
I read about this and could not find any site to comment on it at... I guess that is why I got a blog, right?
Here is the link to the story:
http://www.officer.com/online/article.jsp?siteSection=1&id=41400
Wow. I am blown away. Obviously the fact that the man he spit on was a cop made his sentence worse--it should not have. Obviously the fact that this man seems to fit the "lowlife" profile made his sentence worse--that should not have mattered either. Where is our impartial system? Where were these jurors minds at?
How can the saliva of an HIV positive man be considered a deadly weapon when HIV is not transferable through saliva?
(Check out this site if you have any doubts about this well known fact:
http://www.thebody.com/content/art17060.html
If you do not want to read the whole thing just skip ahead to the parts about Kissing and Saliva)
I cannot believe there is no outrage over this. Imagine if Magic Johnson had done this... I doubt he would have been drunk or resisting arrest but imagine he had a run in with a cop, got angry and spit on him. Obviously people would be angry but if he got any real hard time, people would be livid with the system. But because of the man in question being low class and poorly thought of, the jury can take his entire life away from him and no one even so much as comments on it.
I could not find any site that had comments on this topic so I hope people will spill their guts here. That is what I want this place to be about... me bringing up interesting topics and seeing what the general reactions to them are. Thanks for reading.
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